


iracundia

by Saraku



Series: garden of sinners [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Developing Relationship, Exarch's tagged because he's important to this, F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Found Family, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, Other, POV Second Person, as in he's the reason this fic exists, how do I... tag....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 04:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20942453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraku/pseuds/Saraku
Summary: You were only ever the adventurer to him, the wide-eyed person that travelled to one of the Grand Cities before being swept up against Primals and Calamities.G’raha Tia, for his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, mended your straining identity before plunging into the depths of Ishgard into another’s care.





	iracundia

Even as you hold his hand in the privacy of his room in the Tower, there is a world of silence that stands between you.

The Exarch had been on his last legs when they’d arrived at the shores of Kholusia, and you wagered it a testament to his sheer stubbornness that he’d only succumbed to total unconsciousness when you’d arrived at Lakeland.

Few words were spoken at the trip back from the Tempest, and none of it came from you nor the Exarch. You’ve spoken a grand total of two things to him since the hood fell, and none came close to describing the absolute hell he’s caused.

The Tower hums, its energy crackling the air as if hearing your thoughts against its keeper, and you resist the urge to snarl at the idea you would ever cause the Exarch harm.

Stubborn and meticulous and _foolish_ he may be, he was yours and with how precious little you could claim your own, you would challenge the Twelve themselves if it meant keeping him safe.

(He’d been _yours_ the moment the hood fell, your heart straining not from the blinding light but for the piece that’s been so close yet so detached from the puzzle of your being, the one that stabilized you when it threatened to swallow.

You’d been his for three hundred years, written upon the night sky and on the scars on his skin, heart giving out for a song carried by his eternal wind.)

A low groan from him calms you before he settles back, the silence between you and him simmering. The action calms you, wanting nothing but for him to be comfortable after three lifetimes of waiting to fall.

It brings you mild amusement that of everything that has happened, of all those you had met and those you’d consider a family, it would be him that could cause a reaction to the smallest things.

He’d brought you to your own personal hell and yet he was the salve to the scabs left behind for the aftermath. He made you relinquish second-thoughts, speak your mind and act with instinct.

Even then, your first instinct when he’d revealed himself at Saint Coinach’s Find was to yell, consequences be damned. Even after so long, he brought about the same feeling.

He’s like that, you realize. He’s always been like that. The young scholar you met so long ago was straightforward, infectious – he made you speak without thought, to express yourself without judgement. No deliberation in words that may spark a war, or rip tensions in a political meeting turned towards you.

Reduced to a bare form, an adventurer in the flesh. You were not the Warrior of Light.

You were only ever the adventurer to him, the wide-eyed person that traveled to one of the Grand Cities before being swept up against Primals and Calamities.

G’raha Tia, for his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, mended your straining identity before plunging into the depths of Ishgard into another’s care.

Your gaze falls on the bandages wrapped taut against his skin, skillfully cared for by the Exarch’s people. For as much as they loved him, they were unable to burn away the shadows in his eyes, instead doing their best to ensure no more scars marred his heart. When Lyna left earlier, the final bastion to the Exarch’s safety, the message left behind was clear.

The Warrior of Light, the Warrior of Darkness, slayer of Primals, liberator of Doma; against the monument of your victories, you are uncertain in your capabilities of helping a man resigned to die, only to live in the world of the aftermath.

Dying was easy. Living after death?

You think of the Cardinal Sins, husks of broken souls torn apart and wretched to pieces as their mocked legacy.

You think of Minfilia, the Oracle that spared two worlds in one, existing in history as she cut her lifeline with a smile.

You think of Ardbert, once an enemy, a silent companion, a piece of your identity, mentioned once and referenced twice by the Exarch, existing in a broken world wrought by his unknowing hands.

You think of the soft-spoken Amaurotine that unknowingly stabilized you when the Light threatened to take over, soothed by their presence and being one of the few acknowledging your reflection’s existence.

(Existing after death was easy. To live was a quandary.)

Worlds and centuries pass into oblivion against your fragmented soul, but still an echo of your pasts follow.

There is a world of silence that stands between you.

Anger simmers through once more. You never wished to become the chosen warrior, the pillar of hope to hold back the swallowing void. To give and give and to return naught –

It will be for the last time.

He’s restored you to your former glory; the chosen warrior of Hydaelyn, protector of Eorzea, saviour of Norvrandt. An adventurer looking for a world thriving in its communities.

You will be selfish. Uncapable as you may, you’re sure G’raha Tia never meant to help put you back together. You owe him much, and this was the beginning to returning his debt, willful you may be.

You put the slightest bit of pressure onto his hand, crystalline and warm. It curls into itself and its owner shifts slightly before moving more in instinctive Miqo’te waking habits.

With the low hum of the Tower as your witness, you watch him awaken at sunlight, a hopeful contrast to his awakening of smoke and ash centuries ago.

When his eyes lock with yours, bloodless red of his ancestors’ bloody past, a reflection of your own bloodstained life, you wrap your hand against his, tight and protective, a tether to reality. For you, for him.

There is a world of silence that stands between you, built upon broken ruins of lost worlds with their people rushing to save it; from being forsaken by one, to save the forsaken one.

Not for the first time, the roles between you and him were reversed – the saviour become the saved, the listener become the speaker.

No words were capable of conveying what you really wish to say. You settle for three, a piece in the bridge.

“Good morning, G’raha,” you say.

You watch the world cross the gap as the silence falls to pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> I have one state of writing and it’s called winging it and writing without drafts because I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. The other half is me having a vague idea of what I want and going apeshit
> 
> The Exarch doesn't ever actually mention Ardbert, by name or his presence, but I have a headcanon and because the ShB story "Through His Eyes" mentioned a thing related to my headcanon, I had to do it.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
